Help me remember this 4X space game...

October 10, 2009 9:54 PM

Looking for a 4X style empire game from my youth. Difficulty: Played it on a VT-100 terminal. Crazy boring details inside.

Here's what I remember. Game was made prior to 1993, single player, turn-based, ASCII characters on a VT-100 terminal. (Could be VT-102, but don't hold me to that, let's say it's in the VT-100 family.)

1. It was an Empire style game that took place on a single screen.
2. The screen did not scroll to show more territory.
3. Each planet was represented by a letter. i.e. A, B, C, D...
4. Planets were randomly populated around the screen and the player and computer player started at opposite corners.
5. When ships crossed paths in space, or when your ships attempt to take an enemy planet, they battled. What was unique was an animated counter that showed real-time losses. The victor was the one who had ships remaining at the conclusion of the battle.
6. The winner was the one who controlled all the planets. (Like Empire)
7. One could expect the game to take about 15 - 20 minutes to play.
8. I think I played this on my university's (URI) PR1ME/PrimOS, as opposed to another mainframe. I don't think there was another one, I think the other one was an internet server.

I'm hoping this game wasn't just limited to URI, but was a common PR1ME program for geeks to kill time.

Google searches turn up results that point me to Sins of a Solar Empire and the like, but sometimes I want a game that'll take 15 mins to play instead of days. If there's even a version that will still work today. But nonetheless, I want to know its name.

posted by CarlRossi to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I don't know the name of the game you're looking for, but the mechanics sound nearly identical to Starbound. http://www.macintoshgarden.org/games/starbound

You might want to check it out, and it's older cousin, Starbound II. They are both really old mac classic games, so you'll need something like Sheepshaver to run them.

Good luck finding the title in question, sorry I couldn't answer but I felt you might be interested in these games.
posted by metacollin at 10:25 PM on October 10

That sounds like it was based on the board game "Stellar Conquest". I think it was a common thing in those days, and your game may well have been locally created. It sounds like the kind of thing that computer geeks of that era did in their spare time. (I wrote one, myself.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:26 PM on October 10 [1 favorite has favorites]

Awesome, I used to play a number of hexagonal derived space games (notably Starbound, but all small, single developer creations), it's good to know the likely genesis of that style of game play.

Sadly, they were all on the Apple II or Macintosh and were not ASCII based. I'm very curious to find out what the asker's game is now.
posted by metacollin at 10:48 PM on October 10

Stellar Conquest does seem to be inspiration for the game but now I can add these additional points:

9. There is one class of ship that you send out in fleets.
10. Every planet is habitable and produces resources.
11. Resources are provided every turn.
12. You control the planet if you get there first, but you had better keep a decent fleet in orbit to defend it.
13. A fleet moves one 'space' per turn, and there are no restrictions on movement other than that. In your first turn, you can send a fleet to the enemy's homeworld if you want. And if you can guess it. The players' homeworlds in the corners tended to have 1-2 close neighbors so both sides could build up decent resources before sending out fleets.
14. Probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. At startup, planets are randomly distributed around the screen. I'll admit to sometimes restarting so the planets were in my favor...

Starbound and Stellar Conquest seem right in the same vein, but I'm beginning to fear that it may have been made by a local, and it was gone when they tossed the computer.

Then again, I remember enough of the game (with enough prodding) that I could probably put it all on paper. Doesn't sound to impossible to be redone. I love 4X games, but I just don't want to deal with that much micromanagement when I play. I think that's why I have such fond memories of this one.
posted by CarlRossi at 10:49 PM on October 10

If the graphics are ASCII the game was made way before 1993. My guess would be Reach For The Stars which was the originator of the space based 4x game and inspired things like Master of Orion, Stars!, Space Empires, and so on.

It almost all sounds like what you're talking about except that there's no way it only took 15-20 minutes to play. This was not a 20 minute game.

But there aren't very many ASCII based space 4x games. Like almost none. So if it isn't RFTS it's probably some home-brewed game.
posted by Justinian at 5:44 AM on October 11

There were lots of ascii space conquest games on BBS's -- I think Trade Wars was the big one.
posted by empath at 11:39 AM on October 11